A Guy Walks Into A Bar And Starts The World's First Live App Development Project
July 20, 2012
Have you ever been in a bar fight? No? Congratulations, then, on your efforts in upholding civilized behavior in your favorite watering holes. Now, let me ask you: Have you ever been in Bar Fight Live? No? Of course, you haven't. That's because it doesn't exist yet — in the App Store, that is. But rest assured that once it does, you might want to be part of it.
Bar Fight Live is, quite possibly, the world's first ever instance of a crowd-sourced and crowd-funded live app development.
Bar Fight Live stars a scrawny, mustachioed stunt guy named Guy Stunt. (Go figure.)
Guy Stunt actually stars in another forthcoming game called Stunt Guy - The Getaway. In Stunt Guy - The Getaway, Guy Stunt grabs onto a car for dear life as it zooms past other cars and collects cash on the multi-lane road. It's basically a top-down obstacle avoidance racing game starring a hapless daredevil. But what about Bar Fight Live itself?
Well, what becomes of Bar Fight Live is entirely up to you, the users. It's going to be a bar fight game featuring Guy Stunt, but its various elements are going to be dictated by you.
For example, in the game's first version, you can vote for your preferred gameplay option. The voting results are then set to influence the game's second version.
"This is a hugely exciting project," said Chris Kempt, managing director of Red Bull Kart Fighter World Tour and, now, Bar Fight Live developer Kempt. "[I]t means that Bar Fight Live's entire user base becomes the client and they can literally make or, even, break the success of this app. It’s a real risk project."
Indeed it is. According to Kempt, "There's no financial safety net during the build."
As mentioned, in addition to being crowd-sourced, Bar Fight Live's development is also crowd-funded.
The game includes in-app purchases that effectively bestow special privileges to users. Among these are voting rights to exclusive content, unlimited play of demo builds, and access to the finished product. Users can even acquire the ability to name or create a game character.
Come to think of it, this type of arrangement is similar to the usual terms of a Kickstarter campaign. With Kickstarter, backers get special rewards that are more or less commensurate with the amounts of their respective contributions.
The main difference between a Kickstarter project and Bar Fight Live is that users of the latter are directly involved right from the get-go.
Bar Fight Live, as well as Stunt Guy - The Getaway, is expected to break out in the App Store really soon. Here's to hoping that, following its release, users don't get involved in a brawl over which gameplay option is best for the game.
